"Major Payne' says it all

Published 4:00 am, Friday, March 24, 1995

"Major Payne" deserves a truth-in-advertising award: The title is exactly the sort of juvenile joke the entire movie leans on.

It's a very loose remake of the not-bad 1955 Charlton Heston comedy "The Private War of Major Benson," dumbed down and made ruder for the '90s. The movie is a showcase for Damon Wayans, a rangy, physical comedian capable of some funny stuff (as he demonstrated on TV's "In Living Color" ). But his one-note performance here won't win any new fans.

Wayans plays a lifer Marine who is turned out to pasture at a Virginia military academy after a career of carrying out deadly, behind-the-scenes fighting assignments. His new mission is to make sure his cadets win the Virginia Military Games. Fresh at the school, he finds that his young charges are a tough, cohesive, well-rehearsed unit clearly destined to seize the first-place trophy.

Wait - we're straying too far from the formula: Actually, the cadets are a group of multiethnic misfits with bad attitudes. One boy is overweight, another is deaf, a third has funny ears, and a fourth is so young he wets his pants while standing at attention.

Major Payne is a lampoon of every rock-hard drill instructor who ever terrified a group of raw recruits in a standard-issue military movie. He's not a bad guy - he just likes to kill for his country, and Marine life is all he's ever known or loved. At the academy, he also meets his foil and eventual love interest, a counselor (Karyn Parsons) who urges him to lighten up with the kids and lectures him on the merits of positive reinforcement as a teaching tool.

Wayans takes some fairly funny swipes at political correctness, and the actor clearly enjoys getting in the faces of his goofy cadets and bellowing scabrous insults at them. He has at least one good set piece when he terrifies the smallest boy with a good-night story that's a warped version of "The Little Engine That Could." But the film stands or falls on the Payne persona - his single-mindedness, nasty humor and relishing of the gruesome details of dirty warfare - and it's not enough. I'm glad the filmmakers decided not to sentimentalize Payne, even when he finally connects with the cadet group, but the downside is that Wayans never shows any range.

A lot of the comedy is vulgar (flatulence, senility jokes), but evidently that's how Wayans - who co-wrote and executive produced the picture - wants to market himself. Director Nick Castle ( "Dennis the Menace" ) has worked in a couple of parodies of big scenes from major war movies ( "Apocalypse Now," "Full Metal Jacket" ), but otherwise leaves this pretty much Wayans' show. It's a show for the actor's fans only.